


Back to the World

by ljs



Series: the Power stories [12]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 15:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8537965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: Part of the Power 'verse, a few steps off Sherlock canon (diverging after "A Study in Pink"), wherein Brexit didn't happen but the 2016 US Presidential election did.My friend Susan gave me this prompt, from Leonard Cohen's "The Night Comes On":Yes, and here's to the few Who forgive what you doAnd the fewer who don't even careAnd the night comes onIt's very calmI want to cross over, I want to go homeBut she says, Go back, go back to the World





	

"We'll do what we can," Anthea says.

Her CIA contact nods. She must know how little Anthea and the rest of her colleagues at Six can actually do to counteract the new Russian access to those in the highest echelons of the American government, but the pledge has to be made. "International cooperation against terror of all kinds," the agent says wearily. "We're counting on it."

Then the agent walks away, into the cloud-touched Saturday sunrise here on Westminster Bridge, lonely before the tourists get there, and Anthea stands there and looks at the Thames. It's grey, choppy, cold – just like she feels.

She hasn't slept. She and her friend and colleague Eve Moneypenny spent the night in the River House working out how their sections would monitor Russian and other European nationalist threats emboldened by the American election. Then Anthea went over to Millbank and had a 4 am private meeting with Sir Harry Pearce to hear what his team was working on for MI5. Then came her CIA contact. 

Now, all she needs is – 

"Get in, my dear," Mycroft says, and she turns. She hasn't heard the Bentley pull up behind her.

It's not until she's settling into the warmth of the passenger seat that she realizes. "No driver today?"

"We're not going to the flat," he says, "it's our day off," and pulls out into the traffic flow.

"You don't take days off, darling," she points out. She'd smile at the very idea but she sees his own sleeplessness written in his pallor, in the circles under his eyes. She knows that he's had to monitor not only the darkness in the US (with its ties to Moscow) but also questions in South Korea and the ongoing nightmare in the Philippines – and then explain what he's seeing to Downing Street and the Foreign Office. No one can believe how everything so tenuously balanced has crashed around their ears, and so his work in explicating the connections is that much harder.

 _He_ manages the smile, crooked and self-deprecating. "I recognize my own past folly. Aren't you the one always saying I'm not superhuman?"

"I had no idea you were listening," she says, and unclicks the seat belt and moves far enough over to rest her hand on his thigh.

"I always listen, my dear," he says, and then speeds the car through an impossibly small opening in traffic.

She closes her eyes, and lets him drive. She doesn't ask where.  
……………………………………  
An hour and a half later, as the sun struggles to break through the grey, they stop in front of a Cotswold cottage so photogenic of its type that she wonders for a moment if it's real. But when she gets out of the car and smells masses of chrysanthemums, spice and earth, she is reassured.

As Mycroft goes around to the boot of the car, she turns and smiles at him. "Borrowed or rented?"

"Borrowed. I'm assured it's fully stocked and ready for us." He collects two overnight bags – his battered inheritance, her ancient Louis Vuitton – from the boot. He _had_ planned this, she thinks even as she moves, he must have had their housekeeper pack for them yesterday.

She takes possession of her own bag and then takes possession of his arm. This close she can feel the fine trembles wracking him. "Good God, Mycroft, you're about to crash," she says, and reaches around and grabs his bag too.

He frowns, but only resists a little. He really is almost out on his feet. "I'm sorry," he says, as he fumbles for the key in his pocket. "It's been worse than I thought." For a man of his reserve, this admission is terrifying.

However, he's also a Holmes and thus resistant to sympathy, so she merely says, "Time for sleep, then," and waits for him to open the door.

Once inside the small, charmingly appointed but chilly cottage, she does a quick recce as she puts the bags in what appears to be the master bedroom. Small ensuite there; larger bathroom down the hall, and a second bedroom; back to the lounge (from which she can see the kitchen) awash in grey daylight from the uncurtained French windows. Mycroft looks even greyer, swaying a bit on his feet whilst he stares at the dark fireplace – gas, she sees.

"Darling," she says, her arms going around his waist, "come to bed. I'll manage the fire. You know you're hopeless at things like that."

"I'm sorry," he says, and leans on her. His trembles are worse.

"Stop," she says, brusque in her concern, and she steers him to the bedroom. He kisses her and then lets go so that he can get his bag and head into the ensuite. 

She busies herself checking the sheets on the bed and putting another blanket on – he gets cold rather easily, hence his habitual wearing of twice as many layers as an ordinary person needs – before going back to the lounge. She kneels in front of the gas fire to light it and then watches the blue flames dance.

Now she feels the weariness too, the tension-aches carried in shoulders and neck, the fears for what's to come. She watches the flames dance and thinks of ashes and pain. Then, a little stiffly, she gets up and goes to the master bedroom.

Mycroft, wearing his pyjamas, all but stumbles out of the ensuite. "A few hours, no more," he says, "the alarm, please?" He falls into bed as if his legs have been cut out from under him, and is asleep at once.

An alarm on their "day off," she thinks wryly. Only Mycroft.

But she does look at her watch, calculate the appropriate amount of sleep for recharging but not too much to prevent night-sleeping, and set her phone accordingly. He's not wrong. He's almost never wrong. He had predicted this week, in fact, but only when it was too late.

After her own quick wash, she goes into the lounge and curls up on the sofa. She wants to be near the fire. And as light strengthens, as flames leap, her eyes close again.

When she wakes, the light is mid-afternoon. Mycroft, dressed again in his country tweed, has just set a teatray with a pot, two mugs, and tea accessories on the long low table between fire and sofa. In her grogginess, she fixates on the unbelievably twee rooster cozy he's seen fit to use. Its knitted cockscomb is very, very red indeed.

"Good afternoon, my dear," he says, his eyes smiling at her, and pours her a cup (white, no sugar) without asking, and hands it to her. "Not that you deserve such a greeting, after leaving me to sleep alone."

"Be quiet, I'm still asleep," she says, and takes her tea and heads for the shower.

Once clean, dry, and warmly dressed in the jeans and jumper Anni packed, she pads on socked feet back to the lounge. He's on the sofa, his feet up on the table and his hand still cradling his mug, staring into the flames even as she had done earlier. His frown is intense.

"You're thinking about work, darling. Stop it at once," she says as she drops down beside him.

"The rules are broken. All of them," he says, and it's not about what she said and it's not a joke.

"Are they?" She pours herself another cup of tea. She needs it if she's going to deal with his wounded male… whatever. She respects his amazing abilities and loves him dearly, but he can be such hard work.

Because he is in fact very good at reading her mind, he laughs. It's bitter, however, the kind of frustrated anger she usually only hears when he's fixated on Sherlock's disasters –

In other words, when he can't control the wreckage of the world. Oh no, this is properly bad. "Oh, Mycroft," she says, and with her free hand she cradles his shoulder. He's still not centered; his tension, like hers carried in shoulders and neck, has him misaligned. "Mycroft," she says again.

His gaze is fixed on the flames. "'He could not work the old way any more,'" he says softly, each word ice. She says nothing. After a moment, he adds, "The last line of James Gleick's book on Chaos. It refers to a scientist understanding he knows nothing, happy to explore. But what if there are no maps to the new way?"

She doesn't have a right answer yet, a way to guide him – or herself, for that matter. So she drinks some tea. She remembers that CIA agent, weary in the new day's dawn, steps steady to the South Bank. She remembers Eve at midnight, glancing at a text and then leaving the room with her phone. When Eve had come back five minutes later, she'd said, "Bond. I've called him home until we know more," and then she went back to their lists.

It was dark then, in that room in Vauxhall Cross. The French windows are darkening now, with the sudden fall of night that happens in November.

Anthea puts her tea on the tray. "Let's go for a walk, darling."

He looks askance at her. "Aren't you hungry? We've missed breakfast and lunch."

"Walk," she says firmly, and pulls him to his feet.

Once she's got her brogues on and they're both in their outdoor jackets, they go out the French windows into a pretty, slightly overgrown garden. "Which way?" 

"I've just said I have no maps for the current moment," he says dryly, but with a faint glint of amusement.

"You've not fallen so low you haven't memorized the roads and attractions here," she says. "Now then, Mr Holmes."

He laughs, and heads for the gate. "This way. Let's go to the river."

"Is it a proper river? I don't have your head for geography."

"Emboldened stream," he says. "It will serve."

And so they walk through the small, pretty town – life glimpsed behind curtains, smoke curling out of chimneys, the barking of dogs as they pass, the occasional shout of children – and down a hill toward the late gleam of water and a bridge over it. They hold hands. She doesn't think about anything but warm fingers against hers, the slope underneath her feet, the branches overhead.

It's not until they're almost to the stream that she realizes she's left her phone in the cottage. This dereliction of duty somehow makes her laugh. When he looks a query, she just says, "Day off," and keeps going.

Without conferring, however, they stop on this side of the bridge. The water's fast, a soothing chuckle in the gloaming. "Shall we play Poohsticks?" she says.

"We shan't," he says, and brings her in close, wrapping her up in his arms, his lips against her forehead. "We'll hear why you wanted to walk." 

"I don't exactly know," she says – confession; bemusement. "I just… wanted to be in the world."

The rush of water fills the silence between them.

"You knew," he says after a long, long moment, "that I wanted to stop."

"This morning?"

"The past twenty-four hours, at least," he says. "As the bloody enormity of the job ahead becomes clearer. The rules are all broken, Anthea, and I'm an orderly man."

"Your rules for yourself aren't even tested, darling. Don't try to fool me." She kisses his cheek, and then sets her head against his chest, resting against his heartbeat.

"I shouldn't dream of it," he says, almost amused. Then, wholly serious, "Aren't you considering it too? The step back?"

"No." 

"Anthea." He pushes her away so that he can study her eyes, there in the near-dark. 

She holds his gaze. She smiles. "Mycroft."

"What do you need for a map in this horrible new world, my dear?"

She closes her eyes, as if she is wishing a wish. But this is reality. "This morning, darling, I stood on another bridge, and I thought, all I need is one thing. And before I could even finish my thought, there you were."

"Anthea," he says, and kisses her, deep and strong like the stream beneath them, steady now as the stones on the bridge. She kisses him back, deep and strong and steady.

Without conferring, they stop at the same time. She says, huskily, "Ready to go back?" 

"Give me another fifteen hours or so," he says, and kisses her again, this time fast, hard, a jolt of something other than comfort. 

"I meant back to the cottage," she says when she can.

"No, you didn't. Now come on," he says on a subterranean laugh, and together they turn, and together they start back up the hill.


End file.
